Pictures From The War Zone

One evening this summer, I watched a producer in London working on the Iran election story. He was scouring YouTube for images of demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere, trying to judge whether some, posted anonymously, were new or had been strung together with older footage. The sky color was his clue to what had been shot that day, when we knew the weather was fair.

This is how news organizations will soon obtain much video from events around the world, even wars. As more people, even in war zones, own camera phones that can upload video to Web sites, we must enlist more unconventional resources and use emerging technology more effectively. In 2007, in part as a response to our Iraq experience, and with an eye to exploiting new digital technology, ABC hired seven new global reporters--in effect, low-cost, one-person bureaus. Other networks have adopted the approach, and we all need to extend the model.

This means multiplying the old-style local news stringer many times over, and providing these "micro bureaus" with new, cheap video technology. Needless to say, we must know our dispersed sources well enough to judge their reliability.

But we probably cannot do this individually--the economics are not viable for any single network these days to pay dozens of micro bureaus in every country.

Here too, the Iraq experience has pointed the way. The effort we made to build a Baghdad mega bureau may have failed, but for the past four years ABC has teamed up with other television networks, namely the BBC, Germany's ARD and Japan's NHK, to conduct countrywide opinion polls in Iraq, to the extent that it's possible. All the networks have used the polling results. There were problems--cameras and stringers disappeared, there were risks for local Iraqis working for us--but the model is a sound one, and we are applying it to Afghanistan.

Mike Gudgell, ABC's longtime Baghdad bureau chief, has been aware of the shifting ground for some time. He says that in late March he met with other bureau chiefs for a drink in the garden of ABC's Baghdad compound.

"We could all see it coming. CBS was gone. NBC was cutting back. Fox was looking for a less expensive space, and ABC was struggling with how best to move forward." When he noted that this might be the end of the multimillion-dollar bureau, the others nodded in agreement. Says Gudgell, "It wasn't just the end for now. It was the end--period."

As war correspondents converge on Afghanistan, the rooftop live shots, gritty embed footage, and blurry jihadi video of IED attacks are all back. But we would be unwise to underestimate the length and cost of this next conflict--and, given our recent experience, we are not inclined to do so. In covering Afghanistan and whatever follows, we producers need to find, train and equip a broad network of regional reporters, and sustain and protect them for the long haul. Perhaps a very long haul.